Heartwood

[Arob]

Nearing home i flipped away from Sara Cox, by luck i happened to catch this on Radio 3, inspired by Robert MacFarlane's The Lost Words.

https://www.thelostwords.org/

 

Heartwood.mp3

[nepia]

Good to see you back on here:  I think of you at this time of year because of your knowledge of apples!

[Arob]

What a kind thing to say, i do still look in from time to time, I've learnt loads from lads on here, when it comes to apples that's most notably been through Dr Alec and Gollum.

It is an apple'y time of year with pruning to be done and rootstocks arriving - will you be grafting this year?

[nepia]

My skills don't reach that far I'm afraid and I don't have any at home!  I just prune others' trees and most of that work is renovation pruning.  Not surprisingly I suppose I don't get to visit enough times to see it through to annual formative work; people don't want to hear that there's three years' work needed to get their tree back under proper control!

 

Alec and Gollum...  I hope they're OK.

[Mark2]

I’d love to hear more detail’s from you both, about your fruit tree pruning, and also what part of the country you both work !

I love working on fruit tree, and think it’s a much needed skill !

[Arob]

There's nothing much to grafting it's just a case of lining up the cambium, it's surprising when you find out just how easily you can do it!  I think a lot of this stuff is intuitive; you must find that with the renovations as you're having to interpret and read the individual tree? 

I've led a fruit pruning course for the first time this year and it was interesting to hear the feedback, the group was nervous and shy at first, and thought what i was telling them was irrelevant, but once they got an overview of the physiology they could start to feel and intuit what was going on and could then begin to think how to help the tree(s) begin to develop in a way which would best suit it form and location, and their needs.

[Arob]

10 minutes ago, Mark2 said:

I’d love to hear more detail’s from you both, about your fruit tree pruning, and also what part of the country you both work !

I love working on fruit tree, and think it’s a much needed skill !

Hi Mark, I'm based in Newcastle and have been involved in community fruit growing for a few years now.  How about you?

 

[nepia]

I'm in Surrey, nearly into Kent.

There are few details really:  renovation pruning isn't difficult once you get hold of the basics of opening out the centre of the tree, removing dead, damaged, crossing branches etc.  After that look at thinning the remainder but not all at once - over several years to reduce the power of the reactionary growth.

As I said above I get little chance to see such projects through to the point that the tree's been recovered and is in 'routine' phase!  I have done a couple of purely spur pruning jobs (just reducing the number of spurs to reduce numerical fruit production); that's tedious!

[Mark2]

Hiii thanks for getting back to me so quickly.

I’m Somerset based ! And am on a bit of a mission to promote restoration of fruit trees and orchards. Where ever I drive I see trees crying out for attention !

I’d love to compare notes ! Community orchards are great social benifit to.

ps wow great music working down that list of names ! Thanks

[Mark2]

Hi ya nepia thanks for your reply !

sounds like we got England covered then ha ha

shame your both not nearer though,we could of maybe organised things.

I’v been doing some fruit tree pruning workshops for several years now ! Last year we did our first grafting workshop ! Big success! It is indeed easyer than it look’s, safety is the key with sharp knifes,

aiming to do more in future.

I’d love to follow both your adventures ?